Safety Of A School Again Is Shattered By Shooting

The crowded Woodson School gym echoed with bouncing basketballs, squeaking gym shoes and the good-natured cries of adults and children at play. Then suddenly, there was gunfire and chaos.

FOR THE RECORD - The first name of Tribune Staff Writer Jacquelyn Heard was misspelled in this story, as originally published.

When it ended Thursday afternoon, 19-year-old Frederick Williams lay dead on the gym floor, shot four times. Eric Carter, 25, staggered out, leaving a trail of blood from the gunshot wound in his thigh.

Outside the preschool and elementary school complex, shocked witnesses watched as shots flew between two gunmen and the sheriff`s deputy trying to catch them, until the suspects escaped in a car.

For the second time, violence from the bleak, bullet-pocked high-rises overshadowing Woodson South and Woodson North schools in the 4400 block of South Evans Avenue spilled over into the gym that not only connects the two schools, but bridges the worlds of street gang violence and children`s games. On Sept. 17, 1991, Woodson North playground supervisor Clarence Notree was overseeing about 25 students playing basketball when a 14-year-old boy ran through an open door and sprayed the room with a dozen shots in what police determined was retaliation for a gang shooting that had occurred two blocks away. Notree was shot in the wrist.

On Thursday afternoon, he unwittingly opened the door to the school`s second shooting, when he admitted two men through the locked rear entrance of the facility, according to school officials. They told him they wanted to play basketball and then they opened fire, the officials said.

Adults and children mingle freely in the gym through the Playground Program, which provides after-school activities for the community at a number of Chicago public schools. The Playground Program is funded through a special city tax but comes under the jurisdiction of the public schools.

Woodson students usually take part in the program from 2:30 p.m. to about 4:15 p.m, said Woodson North Principal William Taylor. Mostly older residents come after that until the program closes at 7 p.m. There were about five school-age children in the gym at the time of the shooting, he said, and 20 adults.

``Community residents flow in and out all evening,`` Taylor said.

``Everyone who lives around here is privy to the program.``

No identification is required for entry, he said.

Williams, who lived across the street from the school, had taken part in the program since he was a youngster, although he came less frequently as a young adult, said Adrienne Fleming, a playground teacher at the school. Carter, who lives on the same block, also played basketball there often, she said.

``They grew up on this playground,`` said Fleming, who has worked there for 26 years.

Authorities believe Williams and Carter were the intended targets of the gunmen. Although a motive had not been determined, gang crime police were working with detectives to determine what might have provoked the shooting.

Three street gangs operate in the vicinity of the schools, with different buildings in the Chicago Housing Authority`s Washington Park complex claimed by rival factions, said Sgt. Charles Springer of the gang crimes south unit.

``This wasn`t any random shooting,`` Taylor said. ``They didn`t just walk in and spray the building with bullets. They knew exactly who they wanted to shoot and would`ve gone into a classroom if they had to in order to get that person. That`s just the kind of climate there is.``

It`s a climate the people who live in the area are familiar with. Just two weeks ago, one security guard was killed and another wounded in the CHA building where Williams lived.

``I was about to go in the gym, and I heard the shots and I made a U-turn,`` Woodson North 6th grader Mark Delano said matter-of-factly. ``What I heard was a pow, pow, pow.``

Six shots were fired inside the gym, said Lt. Thomas Byrne, commanding officer of the Chicago Police Department`s school patrol unit.

A sheriff`s deputy who works as a security guard at the school was escorting teachers to their cars when he saw people running out of the gym, Byrne said. He ran after the gunmen, and after they began shooting at him, he fired five shots at them.

The men fled in a Ford Fairmont, with a license plate that begins with the letters VG, Byrne said. A passerby gave the deputy, whose name police declined to release, a ride in an attempt to catch them, but they escaped, according to witnesses.

A .357 magnum was recovered outside the school, Byrne said.

Williams was pronounced dead at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Carter was in critical condition Thursday night at Cook County Hospital, according to a spokeswoman there.

Thursday`s shooting was the fourth time in less than a month that violence has invaded Chicago`s schoolgrounds, although it is the first that didn`t involve any students.

On Monday, 16-year-old Laroyal Crowley was seriously wounded in a drive-by shooting outside Orr High School as students poured out the doors at the end of the school day.

DeLondyn Lawson, 15, was killed Nov. 20 and another student was injured when a schoolmate at Tilden High School opened fire randomly in a hallway between classes after a dispute with other students about a gambling debt. The school has metal detectors but hadn`t used them the day of the shooting.

Just 10 days earlier, Willie Clayborn, 13, died when he accidentally shot himself in the head while playing with a gun in his 7th-grade classroom at Sherman Elementary School.